Barbara Walters admitted the other day that she once thought Barack Hussein Obama was the Messiah. That was then and this is now. The same Barbara Walters must have had her health insurance cancelled because she has just declared that Hillary Clinton is the Messiah-ette of 2013. A lot of people in the left-wing news media must have agreed that Obama was some sort of messiah because they were talking about him with the same hushed tones of reverence you would normally hear in church. Except Chris Mathews who had to inject his semi-pornographic comment about Obama giving him a thrill up his leg. And all those halo pictures were getting to be a bit too obvious.

So much for the ups and downs of Obama’s spiritual reputation. The real reality is that Barry Soetoro //aka// Barack Hussein Obama doesn’t know anything about being a messiah and his most notable creation ObamaCare, the signature law he championed, is crumbling into a pile of dust at his feet – sort of God-like in reverse. And the liberal mainstream news media is beginning to report it.

After ramrodding ObamaCare through Congress with only the Democrats voting for it and government officials declaring it the law of the land that nobody was allowed to read before voting on it, Obama has exercised dictatorial powers not authorized in the Constitution and changed the law a half-dozen times in order to fix every problem that crops up. Here is what others have to say about the latest changes.

Wall Street Journal

Obama Repeals ObamaCare
Under pressure from Senate Democrats, the President partly suspends the individual mandate.

Opinion Dec. 20, 2013 6:41 p.m. ET

It seems Nancy Pelosi was wrong when she said “we have to pass” ObamaCare to “find out what’s in it.” No one may ever know because the White House keeps treating the Affordable Care Act’s text as a mere suggestion subject to day-to-day revision. Its latest political retrofit is the most brazen: President Obama is partly suspending the individual mandate.

The White House argued at the Supreme Court that the insurance-purchase mandate was not only constitutional but essential to the law’s success, while refusing Republican demands to delay or repeal it. But late on Thursday, with only four days to go before the December enrollment deadline, the Health and Human Services Department decreed that millions of Americans are suddenly exempt.

At this point, after months of on-the-fly pronouncements, delays, and exemptions (often announced, not coincidentally, in the days just before a major national holiday), perhaps nothing should surprise us anymore about Obamacare’s disastrous rollout. But yesterday’s announcement is still startling because of what it says about the state of the president’s signature domestic legislation. The law is falling apart before our eyes.

….
But by conceding that the individual mandate can and should be delayed for one group, the administration has opened a major can of worms. For starters, this exemption is going to strike many Americans as blatantly unfair and arbitrary. It comes at the 11th hour, after millions of people, including those with canceled plans, have already made their choices based on the rules they thought would be in effect. The administration said for months that the mandate would not be waived for anyone, even those with canceled policies, and it vowed a veto of any delay legislation coming out of Congress. Now the rules have been changed, and some families who have committed to pay thousands of dollars in insurance premiums will feel very personally betrayed by an untrustworthy administration.

An untrustworthy administration

Welcome to the newest banana Republic. Democrats in America must be proud of themselves. And Republican Congressman Joe Wilson was right after all when he mouthed the words “YOU LIE” during Obama’s State of the Union address. Heck, even the liberal fact checking web site Politifact gave Obama the Lie of the Year Award.

Apostasy laws are those under which a person is punished because he or she chose to change their religion.

I recently launched an initiative at the International Civil Liberties (ICLA) Alliance called the Victims of Sharia Action Network (VOSAN). The idea behind the project is to highlight human rights abuses around the world that are caused by certain aspects of sharia, the Islamic religious law.

It is important that Muslims and non-Muslims have equal protection under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights even if they happen to reside in a Muslim majority country. Human rights should apply equally to all irrespective of colour or creed. A person’s religion should not act as a barrier to the enjoyment of such basic rights.

However, in 1990 the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) created a rival to the United Nations Universal Declaration – The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam. This makes human rights subject to the Islamic sharia and in so doing deprives people in Muslim countries of their most basic human rights.

Yesterday ICLA highlighted the case of Bishoy Armyia, a person who has suffered persecution in Egypt due to changing his religion from Islam to Christianity. The Egyptian state also seems to have got involved in the persecution. This might be a legacy case carried over from the time when the religious extremists of the Muslim Brotherhood ruled Egypt but this man still languishes in an Egyptian jail.

YOU can help this poor man have a greater chance to be reunited with his family this Christmas time if you act now. Please sign the petition that has been publicised by the Voice of the Copts website.

David Dinkins is the former Mayor of New York City. He presided over the Big Apple in the early 1990s, at one of its lowest points. Crime, sleaze, poverty and corruption were at their peak during Dinkins’ tenure.

He was elected Manhattan Borough President in 1985 on his third run for that office. He was elected the city’s Mayor on November 7, 1989, having defeated three-term incumbent Mayor Ed Koch and two others to win the Democratic nomination and going on to narrowly defeat Rudy Giuliani, the Republican candidate.

He continued to work with, and appoint Marxists, through his term of office.

Dinkins currently serves as Professor of Public Affairs at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. He hosts Dialogue with Dinkins, a public affairs radio program and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the board of the American Stock Exchange, among many other organizations

Lawmakers are already looking for a procedural path that will ease passage of a $1.012 trillion spending bill early next month. CQ Roll Call (sub. req’d) reports the “Closed-door negotiations on the fiscal 2014 omnibus over the next two weeks will be the best chance for lawmakers and lobbyists to secure funding or favored provisions since few if any amendments are expected when the legislation moves to the floor in January.”

After the massive omnibus is unveiled in early January, there will be little if any opportunity for lawmakers to amend the bill:

House leaders could find another bill that previously passed both chambers but has yet to be conferenced, strike the text and replace it with that of the omnibus. The House Rules Committee could pass such a measure under a closed rule, allowing for no amendments and quicker consideration in the chamber. That measure would then be sent to the Senate as a so-called “message,” and that designation would allow for only one procedural vote — and subsequently limit the opportunity for opponents to filibuster the measure — ahead of final passage.

However, few such “shell” bills exist, and it is unclear whether leadership could find an adequate legislative vehicle.

Another approach would be for Senate leadership to take one of the four fiscal 2014 appropriations bills that passed the House earlier this summer, replace it with the omnibus text and send it back over to the House for consideration following two procedural votes.

An anonymous Republican appropriations aide told CQ Roll Call that is it “premature to speculate” on the process this early, but as we saw with Ryan-Murray, negotiators try to control the flow of information to ensure the debate is framed on their terms.